Good Friday
A new day dawns, and you know now, Lord Jesus, that your fate is sealed. Behind you a night of prayer and struggle. A night of solitude. But to break man’s closed heart, you accept to go so far as to break your own on the cross.
In you, Jesus, God reveals himself as the Love that is only Love. And when love does not meet love, when it comes up against our refusals, it remains powerless. It can no longer offer anything but its own wounds.
You find yourself alone, Jesus. You see Judas go out into the night and you say to your friends, “Where I am going, you cannot go. You take upon yourself the ultimate loneliness that the tried and tested encounter when the abyss of pain becomes a precipice where all paths end.
You find yourself alone, Jesus, and in this you join all the wounded, lonely like yourself, the crowd of nameless strangers, all those who stand on the edge of despair, those who turn one cheek, then the other.
In the midst of this world in disarray, in the midst of the unimaginable cruelties of which human beings are capable, in the midst of the dramas that are played out on our doorstep and the revolts that sometimes inhabit our own hearts, Jesus Lord, give us the power to stand close to you, to remain where you have known how to remain to the end: in that intimate place where God continues to dwell, silent, the first to be touched by our pain.
May no one succumb to the dizziness of nothingness, to the night of despair. We ask this as we call upon all of us on this day the Breath of Final Silence, the bond of Love that seals the communion between you and the Father, even in death, and beyond!
A new day is dawning, and you know now, Lord Jesus, that your fate is sealed. Behind you a night of prayer and struggle. A night of solitude. But to break man’s closed heart, you accept to go so far as to break your own on the cross.
In you, Jesus, God reveals himself as Love who is only Love. And when love does not meet love, when it comes up against our refusals, it remains powerless. It can no longer offer anything but its own wounds.
You find yourself alone, Jesus. You see Judas go out into the night and you say to your friends, “Where I am going, you cannot go. You take upon yourself the ultimate loneliness that the tried and tested encounter when the abyss of pain becomes a precipice where all paths end.
You find yourself alone, Jesus, and in this you join all the wounded, lonely like yourself, the crowd of nameless strangers, all those who stand on the edge of despair, those who turn one cheek, then the other.
In the midst of this world in disarray, in the midst of the unimaginable cruelties of which human beings are capable, in the midst of the dramas that are played out on our doorstep and the revolts that sometimes inhabit our own hearts, Jesus Lord, give us the power to stand close to you, to remain where you have known how to remain to the end: in that intimate place where God continues to dwell, silent, the first to be touched by our pain.
Holy Satursday
Lord, God of the Living, this Holy Saturday confuses us. Have you deserted Golgotha, powerless? “This God is worthless who does not declare his child,” we are told. What should we do with this feeling of scandal and disappointment? Even Jesus, tortured in agony, threw this ultimate incomprehension at you, when everything was falling apart. In him, our questions and our revolts are echoed. If Jesus himself launched this cry, do we dare to make it our own and let our own feelings of injustice, of anger perhaps, find their way to the cry?
It is hard to believe that you are there, Lord: at the very heart of destitution, suffering and despair. To see you join humans in all their cries, torn, grieving.
Bruised, destitute, inconsolable, you dare to show yourself vulnerable. But it is so unspeakable that it is your silence tonight that cries out in our midst. And your absence is the same as your presence, here and now.
On the threshold of the Sabbath, at the hour when one can no longer distinguish a black thread from a white one, they are still standing there, the women, outside their homes, outside the place that traditions attribute to them.
Tonight, others will light the Sabbath candles, others will welcome the immemorial light, for they are not finished with the darkness. They are not finished with your body, bruised and desolate by the breath, Jesus!
They now have at heart the gestures to be made to surround death, to root life to the end, in a respect which you yourself have shown them the way.
Women keep watch. They know how to stand between day and night, between death and life, between suffering and appeasement, in a fidelity from which nothing can divert them.
Here we are with them, entering into silence together, keeping watch for those who weep tonight, for those whose wounds call for healing, liberation and forgiveness.
Here we are, Lord. We will not leave you alone.
Easter
You who have seen and believed, run,
run to all the roads and squares,
to reveal the great secret of God!
Go and say that the night is over,
that everything has a meaning,
that tears are dew,
that every drop is a star.
Go and say that the wounds are healing,
go and say that the desert is blooming,
that love has now won,
that joy is not a dream!
Go and say that joy has a face,
precisely the one that has been disfigured by death,
precisely the one that was transfigured by Easter.
Today, precisely now, here.